“But he’s not going after soldiers or diplomats.” She shook her head. “He’s deliberately going after women and children. And that makes him a monster in my book. Whatever kind of man he might have been before that bomb landed in his village doesn’t matter. Now he’s evil. An evil man doing evil deeds.”
It was an impassioned speech given by a passionate woman. Chelsea was a true patriot. And she believed in the U.S. government. Even through all its missteps and mistakes, through all its self-serving appointments and support of totalitarian dictators, through all its posturing and bullying, she believed America was still a beacon of hope the world over. They’d had many discussions on the subject long ago, and it seemed her stance hadn’t become jaded in all the years since.
But she wasn’t finished. “We all, each and every one of us standing in this room,” she slid a glance toward him, “have lost people we love in this war. But you don’t see us killing indiscriminately. You don’t see us searching for nuclear weapons to unleash on an innocent civilian population.”
“Yeah.” Delilah nodded wearily, lifting a hand to her temple. “I…I understand. I really do. I just can’t help but wish my uncle wasn’t caught up in the middle of it.”
“You and me both.” Chelsea’s smile was compassionate. “But we’re doing everything we can, using satellite imagery and scouring traffic camera footage to try to locate that second rental vehicle. We’re going through phone records, recent online chatter of known domestic terrorist groups, and much, much more. I assure you, the minute I hear something, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, why don’t you head next door and get some sleep.”
Delilah shook her head. “I don’t think I can.”
“Then just lie down and rest for a while. We don’t know how long this thing will last. But regardless of whether its hours or days, you’re going to need your strength.”
“Yeah,” Delilah conceded on a heavy sigh, looking a little lost and a lot beaten down. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“And you don’t have to worry about al-Hallaj making another attempt to snatch you. These guys,” Chelsea motioned to the Knights as well as Dee and Dum, “will be taking shifts guarding both your door and your bathroom window around back.”
“Thank you,” Delilah said wearily, allowing her gaze to alight on every face in the room in turn. “Thank you all for everything.”
“No thanks are necessary,” Dagan assured her.
She gifted him with a sad, tired smile before turning for the door.
“I’ll take first shift out front,” Mac declared, stepping up behind her.
“Hey.” Dagan stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you let me do that?” He lowered his voice so only Mac you hear him. “Then you can go make right with her whatever it is you just made wrong with her.”
“I didn’t make anything wrong with her,” Mac insisted. “And I’m takin’ the first shift.”
Dagan released the big Texan, shrugging and thinking, well, like my mother used to say, there’s no use trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit…
Chapter Eighteen
Three hours later…
Sitting in the plastic chair he’d positioned beside the door of the Noel Motel’s room number four, Mac closed his eyes and counted to ten. Twice. Then three times. And when that didn’t work, he went in for a fourth.
None of it helped. He was still hornier than a bull separated from the heifers in the herd. And why should that be, do you suppose? Well, because five minutes ago, when he knocked on Delilah’s door to hand her the turkey sandwich and bag of chips Ozzie procured from the local Subway, she answered his summons in her T-shirt.
In her T-shirt, and nothing else…
Oh, sure. She’d been wearing panties. Pink panties, to be exact. Pink panties with a little red bow on the front—not that he was obsessing about them or anything. Okay, so maybe he was obsessing a little. But, the pink panties alone wouldn’t have put him in this particular predicament—hot and hard and fidgety as a woodshed waiter—had they not also been paired with a clean white T-shirt that she’d donned after taking yet another shower. And let’s not even get him started on the earlier agony of what it had been like to sit outside her door, listening to water running inside, all the while picturing her naked and wet, because that was another issue altogether.
No. When he said she answered the door in her T-shirt and nothing else, what he really meant was that she’d been without a bra. And he’d been able to make out the shape of her nipples. Her decadent, rosy-red nipples. Those nipples he’d licked and laved and sucked just a few hours back. Those nipples that, despite everything he told himself to the contrary, despite everything he told her to the contrary, he wanted quite desperately to lick and lave and suck again.
Christ almighty. He was in a bad way. And it didn’t help matters that, for the last three hours, he’d been soundly chastising himself for the way he handled things after she flat-out asked him why he didn’t like her.
Didn’t like her? Was she crazy? Of course he liked her. What wasn’t to like?
But, in true guy form, when he tried to convey that it wasn’t her, that it was him, it’d somehow come out sounding all wrong. Accusatory, almost. And offensive, certainly.
“Holy shit fire, man,” he muttered to himself. “You gotta get it together.”
And while he was at it, he’d also do well to yank his head out of his ass. Because too much more of that kind of thinking, of obsessing about Delilah, about what he should or should not have said, about how gorgeous and sexy and flat-out provocative she was, and he might be tempted to say fuck it to all his hard-earned life lessons, fuck it to everything, and just give in. Give in to the needs of his body. Give in to her desire to see where things between them might lead…
But while he was damn sure he could pull off the first of those two things, he was also just as certain the second would be asking too much. He may like Delilah immensely, respect her grit and her spunk, but…God’s honest truth, he didn’t…well, he didn’t trust her. Or, more accurately, he didn’t trust himself around her.
Think of Jolene, he told himself. Think of that god-awful morning when the bank came to take the ranch…
And, yessir. That helped to instantly cool his ardor. Because, not counting the day his father died, the day he lost the Lazy M was the worst of his entire, sorry life.
It’d been gone. Just like that. The land his ancestors had worked for three generations. The big, rambling house that had seen the births and deaths of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. The cattle herd he’d helped breed, brand, and build. All of it was taken from him in the blink of an eye. And all because the blessedly few extra pennies that had been in the ranch’s coffers had gone to finding Jolene…
Lawyers, private eyes…hell, even a former police detective had milked the estate dry. And then the inheritance taxes had come due, followed by a balloon mortgage payment, and that was that. Game over.